BY TRAVIS BARRETT

Outdoors Writer

A little elbow grease. That's all it really took to put together one of the best marketing tools the state of Maine has seen in quite some time.

Bob Duchesne poured more than four years of hard work into creating a landmark publication for Maine's outdoors. The "Maine Birding Trail," created entirely by Duchesne's efforts, is a companion book and field guide that outlines the best birdwatching spots our state has to offer.

"The whole state's good for birding," said Duchesne, who has guided birding trips for the Audubon Society for more than two decades. "I've just fallen in love with some of rural areas. We have all these great transition zones -- places like Moosehead or Baxter State Park, where you're going from a southern hardwood forest into northern spruce forest.

"Those are the places where you have the best of both worlds."

The worlds are contained in the 82 sites outlined in Duchesne's Maine Birding Trail. Not only does the 35-page brochure serve avid outdoorspeople, but it also stands to be an important building block toward continuing to boost eco-tourism opportunities here in Maine.

"It's one piece of the tool set -- the foundation that allows the state's tourism departments and interested non-profits and community groups to continue to find ways to sell what we have," said Gardiner's Jeff Wells, the senior scientist for the Boreal Songbird Initiative who has seen other states create similar guides to their birding opportunities.

"The production of this is the absolute essential first step, not just in conservation but also on the business and recreation side. It's an incredible accomplishment for us to have it, and certainly it's an incredible accomplishment for Bob. It was more or less one person slaving away at it for years."

* * *

Bob Duchesne thought about going the same way dozens of writers had gone it before him, following the formula for getting a piece of nonfiction work from the brain to the printed page.

Get time off, seek sponsorship from various interested groups, apply for grant money, then write the book.

"Then I figured I could do just this whole thing faster and pass it over to people when it was done," said Duchesne, who lives in Hudson and serves in the state legislature. "So every birding season for about four years in a row I went out and just did it."

After it was done, that's when Duchesne set about marketing it to the right people -- people at the Maine Audubon Society, the Department of Conservation and the Maine Outdoor Heritage Fund, to name just a few. From there the project ballooned from a book into a marketing tool for the state.

It may have worked out in a backwards fashion, but it worked out nonetheless for Duchesne -- who started out with birding as a hobby. He visited locales from Kittery to Caribou in collecting information for his pet project.

"Probably the most fun (research trip) was the one that was the least productive," Duchesne said. "It was going into the north Maine woods -- going and documenting what was there. It was just that there was no one else around there at all.

"Soon you realize that there are a lot more birds around than you realized."

* * *

All those birds mean all sorts of opportunity. Certainly, Department of Conservation commissioner Pat McGowan figured that out on a trip across the border into New Hampshire a few years ago.

This week DOC's deputy commissioner, Eliza Townsend, relayed the story of when McGowan made that trip. He was in Grafton Notch State Park when he encountered an older couple with high-end binoculars and assorted other equipment. They were from the other side of the country, in New Hampshire to view a rare bird.

"They'd flown in because it was a rare bird that was on their 'life list,' " Townsend said. "So, we got to thinking, we can certainly get (birders) to go Downeast to see a puffin or to the Greenville area to see a spruce grouse."

There are actually two different facets to Duchesne's project. There is the free Maine Birding Trail brochure, which contains 82 sites along the statewide "trail" -- including directions to each as well as information about peak seasons and the species that are there. There is also the book Duchesne wrote, "The Official Guide to the Maine Birding Trail." It was published by Down East Books and contains additional maps, tips and sites.

"We are very, very fortunate that Bob was willing to take the project on," said Townsend, whose office got involved over the last couple of years, seeing it as an incredible way to sell people both here at home and from further away that Maine's outdoors has hundreds of things to recommend it.

"We're excited about taking further steps on that front, and we're also excited about the idea to capitalize on our natural assets."

* * *

Birders spend millions of dollars annually on their pursuit, but the most attractive part of birdwatching has always been its lack of overhead costs.

Your backyard is free -- as are the half-million acres of public lands in Maine. In many cases the cost of a tank of gas and perhaps a nominal state park fee are the only things standing in the way of an inexpensive day afield.

And if you hit all 82 sites outlined in the Maine Birding Trail brochure, you'll have plenty of days afield.

"The message is: 'Don't be intimidated,' " Townsend said. "You don't have to go to the wilderness, you don't always have to go hard-core."

Jeff Wells especially likes the notion of the trail because it quickly -- and clearly -- introduces even the most novice birders to the state's most popular birding destinations. And even someone like Wells, who deals with the science of birds every day in his career, said he would be quick to add the brochure to the glove compartment in his car.

"You really do need that simplification of the information to make it accessible to anybody," Wells said. "All the spots, or at least most of them, are in here.

"You know, my aunt and uncle might not buy a book on bird (habitat) in Maine, but they might pick up something like this, go visit one of the spots over the weekend and then call me up and tell me all about what they saw."

Which, Duchesne hopes, is exactly what his work might inspire. Sure, adding money to the state's coffers via eco-tourism is significant, but essentially it's really all about giving people the push they need to explore what's around them. He expects to add sections to the trail in the future, focusing on areas around the Northern Forest Canoe Trail and Maine's new Hut-to-Hut trail system.

"I expect another generation of this," Duchesne said. "We have so many great places to offer."

Travis Barrett -- 621-5648

tbarrett@centralmaine.com